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| by Timmy Walnuts | March 31st, 2009 - 4:04 pm
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If you’re old enough, you may remember the first truly addictive first person shooter developed and published by then fledgling gaming company id Software. This shooter became a staple for the genre, blazing a trail for other landmark titles. Simply known as Wolfenstein 3D, the game blended graphic violence with fantastical story, pitting the protagonist against an entire castle full of Nazis, with only a knife and pistol at your disposal as you break free of your jail cell. With groundbreaking gameplay and plot, the inevitable controversy came to light very soon after the games release. Not only was it deemed too violent, the use of the Nazis and their symbols garnered a banning from Germany on all versions of the game (besides the SNES version, which took out the Nazis. But who wants Wolfenstein without killing them?). Although Wolfensteing 3D received a lot of negative press, id Software never looked back and continued to churn out genre-molding, legendary games in the likeness of Doom and Quake.
With the superior 3D graphical engine created, many developers utilized it to create notable first person shooters/fantasy. One company, however, housed the technical wherewithal to develop further installments of two very popular id Software series. Beginning their career using the Doom engine, Raven Software developed many games under the Heretic/Hexen game series, all formally published by id. Starting as primarily PC developers, Raven has progressed throughout their twenty year lifespan to working with consoles as well, most recently developing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to generally positive reviews. With their success and collaboration with id, Raven was granted a shared development over Quake 4, and now were given the spotlight again for the next installment of Nazi slaughtering that will be Wolfenstein.
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| by Danny Internets | March 31st, 2009 - 2:14 pm
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Any fan of Dawn of War, Warhammer 40,000, or just good old-fashioned ass-kicking needs to see this video immediately. Embedded in this article is pre-rendered footage showcasing he developers’ collective vision of what Dawn of War 2 should have been. Had Relic been able to hold on to even a tenth of the awesome contained in this video Dawn of War 2 would easily have been the most visually stunning and downright nastiest RTS games ever published.
The biggest and most notable differences between the video here and actual gameplay are the fluidity of movement and robust physics. With the exception of leaping Tyrannids, most units in Dawn of War 2 tend to chug along very slowly and unit interactions are unnoticeable save for the elaborate (and, unfortunately, easily overlooked) melee “sync” kills. In this video we see the mighty Space Marines bowling over the smaller Eldar Guardians (space elves) and even knocking through environmental fixtures. Reality be damned, that is the breed of awesome that never gets old, no matter how many times you see it.
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| by Danny Internets | March 27th, 2009 - 8:20 am
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Yesterday on the Sims 3 website, development head Rob Humble announced that the next installment of the franchise, one of the most financially successful ones in history, will pass up on employing draconian DRM methods this time around:
Hello everyone I wanted to share news with you regarding our copy protection plans for The Sims 3.
We’ll have more information for you as we get closer to launch about everything we’ll have to offer on TheSims3.com and The Sims 3 Store, but we have heard your requests over the past months and here is our plan for The Sims 3.
The game will have disc-based copy protection - there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed.
We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.
Source
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| by Timmy Walnuts | March 26th, 2009 - 8:34 pm
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With the Games Developer Conference of 2009 well on its way, the biggest story to hit so far is that of OnLive. A new way to game, OnLive will allow gamers to play titles that are streamed. Now I’m not very computer-programming savvy, so when I read that its similar to “cloud computing” I have no idea whats being discussed. The concept, however, is very intriguing.
Considered a serious competitor to the console market, OnLive will let even low-end computer users, whether you are an Intel Mac running Mac OSX or a Windows PC running XP or Vista, stream any top end games. Though these games are limited to publisher releases, many big players have already signed on, including EA, Take Two, and Ubisoft. The idea is simple: OnLive will have dedicated servers to running these 7th generation games, requiring just a video output in order to play. Depending on your internet connection, “seamless” play can be achieved in standard or high definition, with a 1.5Mbps or 5.0Mbps connection, respectively. The creator, Steven Perlman (of QuickTime and WebTV fame), claims the system to be “future-proof,” meaning that games developed for future consoles and higher end computers will play fine through their hardware, as all the upgrading will be done on the back-end, within the servers hosting the games. Games will be available for a one time rental or a permanent purchase. Pricing, though has been a little iffy. No definite prices have been set, although we know that there will be a monthly subscription fee, and other fees may apply.
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| by Danny Internets | March 26th, 2009 - 12:57 pm
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According to Jager, Relic Developer and forum liason, not just one but TWO new Dawn of War 2 patches are on the way:
Re: ETA on next big patch?
We have one patch that has already been finalized and is in cert, and then another bigger patch which will be finalized in a few weeks.
Source
The first patch will presumably offer a formal fix to the population cap bug, for which a workaround was provided by Relic on March 10th with patch 1.1.3. Based on community opinion, possible balance changes will likely focus on toning down the Tyranids (particularly the Ravener hero) and increasing the competitiveness of the Eldar, who were severely nerfed during beta testing and in the zero-day patch.
Since the patch is already undergoing the certification process required by Games for Windows Live, it should only be 7-14 days before the update is ready to go live (assuming it meets MS standards).
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| by Danny Internets | March 26th, 2009 - 11:15 am
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Survivors get the smack-down with Valve’s most recent patch to its zompocalyptic first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead. Formerly spammable melee attacks by the survivor team now come with a short cooldown, which goes a long way towards addressing incessant whining concerns from the community:
Game and client changes
- Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
- Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
- Addressed some surround sound detection issues
- Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista
- Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded
Dedicated server changes
- Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing them to delist temporarily
- Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly–you could join a dedicated server that had a previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby
- Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use “key:” in the server tags instead of “sv_search_key.” This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags
- Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting
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| by Danny Internets | March 26th, 2009 - 10:35 am
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Looks like someone smuggled out some first-hand awesome from GDC 2009. The following video is the first time unedited gameplay footage of God of War III has been made public.
Nothing new here, but new isn’t really what God of War fans are looking for. Judging by the amount of ass-kicking seen here, I don’t see too many people getting their panties loincloths in a twist.
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| by Danny Internets | March 26th, 2009 - 9:20 am
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While this footage is already featured at virtually every gaming website this side of China, I would be remiss in not posting it here in case some folks haven’t stumbled upon it yet.
A teaser trailer to the sequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, one of the greatest first-person shooters ever made (both online and offline), was debuted yesterday at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The phrase “teaser” certainly holds true here; no actual in-game footage is shown, however intense loyalty and respect for the franchise gives it license to be perhaps a bit more coy than usual.
Worth noting is that the Call of Duty prefix seems to have been omitted from the game’s title. No word yet whether or not this is an official change, or just a short-hand way of referring to the game in the trailer.
Release date: 11/10/09.
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| by Danny Internets | March 25th, 2009 - 9:57 am
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At the risk of further hyping what is already just pure hype, a Blizzard Community Representative recently commented on the Diablo 3 forums that next BlizzCast, a series of infrequent (but informative) podcasts produced by Blizzard, will likely be released within the next week and will focus primarily on disseminating new Diablo 3 information:
I’m probably not supposed to say that BlizzCast 8 is almost entirely Diablo III related and should be out before the end of the month. It’s going to be a good one and… oh no!
Source
The remark comes in response to a forum poster’s request for more information on the game, the last substantive piece of which was released back in October 2008. The last episode of BlizzCast was released on 2/3/09 and consisted solely of inside commentary about Wrath of the Lich King, the most recent World of Warcraft expansion. Past BlizzCasts have highlighted news and previews for Blizzard’s other upcoming titles, including Starcraft II and Diablo III.
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| by Danny Internets | March 24th, 2009 - 11:03 am
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Good things come to those who wait. That is, unless you’ve been waiting for Fallout 3’s newest DLC, The Pitt.
After having been delayed until the end of March, The Pitt was finally released today by Bethesda Softworks to Xbox and PC users. To the dismay of its fans, many of whom stayed up past midnight to be the first to experience the DLC hot off the presses, the release is apparently so riddled with bugs that the game is unplayable under most circumstances.
Within minutes of The Pitt’s debut, internet forums buzzed angrily with reports of a myriad of bizarre technical problems ranging from out-of-place smoke stacks to floating objects (trees, barrels, rocks, etc.) to system instability. While not game-breaking, perhaps the most obvious issue with the game is the presence of numerous red exclamation point boxes (pictured above) dotting the landscape, which are used in other Bethesda games (such as Morrowind and Oblivion) to indicate missing texture files.
Apart from its cosmetic problems, a number of serious glitches also plague the expansion. Most notably, users report that the downtown area of the city itself, an activity hub integral to advancing the story among its other uses, causes repeated system crashes at the loading screen upon entry. PC users complain of both constant crashing to the desktop and hard lock-ups requiring a cold reboot. For many, the game is simply unplayable in its current state.
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